Conscious Dreamer
by Maura Maud Jadeit
Summary: Reality has an annoying tendency to get inspired by dreams and nightmares. The dream Reid had been having ever since he was shot always kept him on edge. Now the dream becomes reality... Reid-centric. Somewhat futuristic except not really. Angst.
1. Chapter 1: Conscious Dreamer

**DISCLAIMER**: The Mark Gordon Company, ABC Studios and CBS Paramount Network Television own Criminal Minds. I just took them out to play and I promise put them back when I'm done.

**Summary**: _The idea for this story came to me quite suddenly and frankly refused to bug off until I wrote it down. Dreams are just dreams. Nightmares are just nightmares. Reality has an annoying tendency to take from both. The dream Reid had been having ever since he was shot always kept him a little bit on edge but as long as it remained a dream he could stand it. Until the reality had turned into nightmare. The question was: did he finally lost it or was forewarned to save those who mean the world to him._

_Reviews are greatly appreciated._

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><p><strong>Conscious Dreamer<strong>

_The whole life is a succession of dreams. My ambition is to be a conscious dreamer, that is all._

_Swami Vivekananda_

_In dreams begin responsibilities._

_William Butler Yeats_

Nightmares plagued him for years. Like the one with Riley Jenkins or Eva Hopton.

Cases. Those that had been won in his dreams had been lost and if they were lost they were lost even more.

He always dreamed.

Every single night.

At times it was a matter of remembering the dream he had during the night. Sometimes he did remember it and sometimes he did not.

This one is recurring. It had started the same day he was shot in left leg by Patrick Meyers and Hotch had been stabbed nine times by Foyet.

It's not even technically a nightmare but frankly it scares the shit out of him, and yes he uses that figure of speech sparely and when he does then he is completely, utterly freaked out.

That very first night he found himself seated in the armchair in Hotch's office and waiting. He waited for hours, unable to move and terrified of the empty room like a toddler of the monsters under the bed.

Finally he heard footsteps. Two sets of them. Distinctive thump-thump of stilettos and heavier, definitely masculine long strides.

The woman who opened the door for a spare second reminded him of Erin Strauss until he realized that it couldn't be Strauss even if the posture was the same.

"Are you sure?" the tone of the woman is soft and familiar.

She sounds exactly like JJ.

"Whom else is left JJ?" the man in the doorway asks. "Someone has to do it and Bureau needs an experienced profiler in this position."

The man standing in the doorway is clean-shaved, pristine and proper. He wears black suit, navy blue tie with gold stripes on his shoulder is hanging a bag from black leather.

The man sounds like Hotch and for a moment looks like Hotch except he is not Hotch.

His hair are brown instead of black and brown eyes are darker than Hotch's. But the length of hair is almost exactly the same and the lines around his eyes and a permanent frown bear strong Hotch-like resemblance.

Except it's not Hotch.

"I will let you settle down," the older JJ says.

They are left alone. Hotch-like imitation that isn't Hotch and him, Spencer Reid.

Then Not-Hotch reaches out and places his hand on the door. It's a very slow gesture, slightly unsure and definitely not Hotch-like. Remorseful.

The hand stills on the door for few seconds before it moves to slide off Hotch's name tag from the door and slides another name tag in its place.

He is angry and he wants to scream. He wants to scream because there is no BAU without Hotch. There is no team without Hotch and this man isn't Hotch.

Except the scream is frozen in his throat and he cannot help but watch as the man walks to Hotch's desk, places the bag on the left edge and slowly reaches for the second name tag one that Spencer is able to see. It reads:

**Aaron Hotchner**

The man takes it in his hands like the most delicate piece of glass and stares at it mournfully before he puts both name tags together and places them in the top left drawer of Hotch's desk.

But that's not the end.

The man reaches into his pocket with his right hand and pulls out another name tag. He smiles briefly at it before he simply places it on the desk. It reads:

**Spencer Reid**

So he stares at his Hotch-like alter ego.

It's a dream, it's not happening, it's a dream and he is going to wake up soon.

And he does. Except the dream doesn't end there and on that night.

It recurs. It always comes back. Sometimes every other night, sometimes after a week but it always comes back.

It evolves. It takes time but it evolves and he evolves with the dream.

He is no longer the watcher, the third party that sticks around Hotch's office and watches how his other self does the paperwork Hotch usually does. That had been the case before JJ left the team. And with her disappeared his detachment.

In his dreams he is himself or rather Hotch-like imitation of himself, one that is and isn't Hotch at the same time.

He is Unit Chief of Behavioral Analysis Unit, he is the leader of Alpha Team.

Oh, there is also the team, except it's the team that's not THE team.

From the original team he is the only one left. There is no one else. There is no Emily, dearest, bravest Emily, she is dead thanks to Ian Doyle. Hotch, Rossi and Morgan aren't there either. But it's Garcia's absence that hurts the most because it's almost tangible and the world is less brighter. Ashley Seaver never made it to this dream.

But JJ is still there even if in his dream she is Strauss, she is Section Chief and his supervisor.

He is a supervisor too. Where the rest of his team had gone he doesn't know. What he knows is THIS team.

SSA Robert Anderson. Good old Anderson from Team Beta. He is the second in command. He is more mellowed version of David Rossi to Reid's version of Hotch. He had aged beyond his years and in reality Anderson is only six years older than he is. Anderson doesn't want to be a leader but he is an experienced profiler and good companion. The years that seemed to pass between now and then took a tool on Reid too.

SSA Dr Kate Cameron. That one is curious. One, that he remembers and one that inwardly utterly amuses him. He dreamed into FBI his next door neighborhood a woman than in real life is about twenty-five at the most in his dream is past thirty. In his dream she is the version, the phantom of Emily. The calm, controlled, compassionate Emily he remembers and admires the most. It's easy to make connections because of the dark hair and Emily-like clothing. Cameron is his inner source of comfort and the pillar of strength the team needs. She is his God's given solace even if he doesn't believe in God.

SSA Duncan Martinez. That one is easy. It's Morgan except it's not Morgan but he is. Tuned out version of Morgan but still the jokester of the group. Strong, loyal, at time obnoxious, at times contemplative. He is a friend except he is not a friend. Reid trusts him with his life and he knows that Martinez returns the sentiment.

Then it gets more complicated and actually funnier and part of him wonders how he managed to dream that part.

SSA Killian Douglas. The Boy Wonder. Genius Profiler. Twenty-seven tops. Slightly geeky and as Reid like as one can get. Except the kid is blonde and blue eyed rather than exact version of himself. But Reid likes him on personal level because in Douglas he finds his own strength, the strength he used to have at the same age.

The next one is less surprising. More so, the choice was kind of predictable. One that he knows in his dream that he had fought tooth and nails to get on the team. One that he needs to protect because the one who should protect him isn't there any longer.

SA Jack Hotchner. Jack is the same he remembers. Haley and Hotch like at the same time. In his dream Jack is around twenty-three, less even. Barely out of academy but already major in abnormal psychology and sociology and surprise, surprise he is Reid's rookie.

Except it's not a surprise. It's a full circle. Hotch was his probationary agent and he is Jack's because he owes Jack a debt he would never be able to pay fully.

Then there is TA Cleo Bernstein. She is not Garcia but she is purple, and occasionally green or lime green, pink at times. She is super-skilled with computers and databases and funny. And she flirts like crazy with Douglas and Martinez. Garcia except not Garcia and seeing her everytime makes him consciously look towards Garcia next day if he can.

This is his team. This is his BAU and they are creepily good even if they aren't his team, the real team.

That of course doesn't mean that there aren't the times when he questions why he even dreams that particular dream because after his initial fright the dream isn't terrifying at all. Well for the most part. Sometimes it feels like it's just an another life, life that he leads in his dream, life where he has the balls in real life he considers himself not having (at the very least in Unit Chief size).

He questions this dream like hell in real life. He knows that he doesn't want Unit Chief post. He knows what it had done first to Gideon and then to Hotch. The prize is too high for him to pay.

Cameron has no reason to be there, she works at GUH as a psychiatrist and loves her job like he loves his. She is a good neighbor but hardly a friend.

He was never particularly close with Anderson, nor he intends to. They go in their separate ways and if they talk it's always Job related, nothing personal. He intends to keep it this way.

So he leads the team, his team and they solve the cases together. Sometimes they mingle, sometimes they don't. Dates as they are, are few but they allow him to establish the timeline.

It's a crapload of years to pass and time has annoying tendency to fly.

The earliest date he remembers from this dream is 12th December 2012. For some reason it is important but he doesn't know why. He doesn't know how much time had passed between that day and the day Strauss-like JJ walked Hotch-like Reid into Hotch's office. Could be few days, could be few months, he doesn't know.

Time flies faster in there and years blur. The team arrives as years pass. First Anderson that frequents the dreams as much as JJ but JJ disappears to occasional dream with Cameron's arrival. Cameron goes Reid's way. BAU is her first posting and she doesn't plan to leave. She brings with herself at some point Cleo Bernstein and is still there when Duncan Martinez makes the scene. She is familiar with Killian Douglas when he comes around. She supported him when he fought with the academy for Jack Hotchner. She is after all his God's given solace.

In real life it's 17th June 2011 in real life. It's 17th June 2028 in his dream.

He is seated at what he finally resigned himself in this dream is his and not Hotch's desk. Even if it's the same piece of furniture. After all he has an eidetic memory, he remembers it from Hotch's office.

He sips his tea between tackling the budget and working a profile on his own. Serial rapist, not the brightest bulb in the box but it's still work.

The bullpen is suspiciously quiet today and he knows his team. Martinez with Douglas and Jack have a tendency to make an awful lot of noise but they are quiet and it's good.

Cameron isn't there with them. Had been for a short time but after nameless, faceless agent that took JJ's old office at some point leaves when Cameron becomes Supervisory Special Agent he assigns the office to her. Maybe because some part of him misses JJ and Emily so terribly that Cameron in his dream is a merge of them both.

His team avoids him like a plague today and he knows why. They always had done it in the past.

Over the years that pass in his dreams 17th June is the beginning of the Week of Avoidance. He taught them well, they know the drill. Well except Jack Hotchner but Jack knows what only JJ and Cameron do.

It has been seventeen years and he still is unable to let go. He can't because if he would let go that would mean that he is not the same man who swore 'to serve and protect'. If he let's go before the unsub is either behind the prison bars or confirmed dead then nightmares that strengthen his frown and deepen the lines on his forehead and turn him into more of Hotch every year that passes in his dream will never disappear. Nor will his cowardly avoidance of the Memory Wall. In his dream it takes him the arrival of Jack Hotchner just few months prior to even approach the wall and take a look at slightly serious, slightly smiling face of Aaron Hotchner and he goes there late at night just to say.

"I will protect him, Hotch, I will protect him until my last breath."

It takes months in real life and years in the dream to finally understand what happened in the dream.

Emily is dead, both in the dream and in real life. In the dream her death was not specified until after Ian Doyle killed her.

Hotch, Rossi, Morgan and Garcia all lost their lives to a sadist in Ravenna, Nebraska on 24th June 2011. That's what says the autopsy report but Reid doesn't need the autopsy report. He has an eidetic memory and he remembers the day.

He remembers standing over four butchered bodies of his dear friends. He remembers JJ blinking back the tears and trying to work, trying to find new information, trying to compartmentalize the deaths of their friends so they can avenge their deaths by catching their murderer.

He remembers shivering except not from cold because it was bloody hot night. He remembers the agony on Hotch's face and the image of crestfallen Jack that followed it. He stares and stares. He doesn't say a word or blinks back the tears which aren't there but inside his world is crumbling.

There is no Hotch, no Morgan, no Garcia and no Rossi. He and JJ are the only one left.

And the profile is wrong. It's utterly wrong because their friends are dead.

They make adjustments on the profile but the killer gets away. They are unable to find him.

The team knows that Reid is not to be approached between 17th and 25th June unless it's a matter of life or death and if he has to be approached they always select Cameron to get the lion out from the den.

So he works, sips his tea and works. He is not approached which is good.

Suddenly there is a knock on the door and he sighs, "Come in."

Predictably, it's Cameron. She wears black slacks and sleeveless, black, cotton turtleneck. Her usual attire for the week. A sign of silent sympathy in mourning people she didn't know but one she respected because they were his friends and she respects him.

She is calm and controlled as usual, she is a psych and during the week he is slightly unstable, snappish and intolerant. That's why she is the only one that comes to him during this time.

"We've got a case Reid," she says quietly, almost mournfully. "It's the Ripper again."

"Again?" he whispers as he stands up.

Part of him wants to dance and sing because if the Ripper is back then he will have a chance to avenge his friends. At the same time he feels ashamed of himself because if the Ripper is back a lot of innocent people are going to die.

And God help him he doesn't want to lose his team all over again. He learned to love and care for all of them and he knows that if he were to lose his team again, if anything happens to them then he would first shot the bastard and then he will shot a bullet into his own brain.

He won't be Gideon, he won't run away like Elle. He will avenge his team, his teams and he will follow them to the great beyond he doesn't believe in.

"Cleo is about to brief the team, Reid," Cameron says gently.

"Thank you, Cameron," he says and follows her out of his office.

Down the ramp and to the briefing room that looks exactly the same as in real life.

Cleon Bernstein is surprisingly blonde haired today as she seats herself in very Garcia manner and starts the briefing.

Reid seats himself in Hotch's usual spot between Jack and Cameron and takes a look down at his tablet.

Oh yes, he has a tablet. He is after all the Unit Chief and Unit Chief cannot be scared of tablets or Blackberries. Reid himself takes comfort in normal folders and the oldest phone possible.

"Lincoln, Nebraska," Cleo says, her voice wavers.

His mouth is suddenly filled with sour taste of will be a throw up soon and he swallows around it.

"Four days ago field office in Omaha had dispatched a Red Cell team to what appeared to be a kidnapping of an eight years old girl, daughter of the major that's why it was so important. Surprisingly upon reaching Lincoln the team hadn't contacted local sheriff, in fact they didn't contact anyone. Two hours after they were supposed to land local sheriff established that the team had been seen for the last time leaving the airport in FBI issued SUV two hours and ten minutes earlier and drove I-80 west rather than east to the place of abduction. The SUV was last seen three hours after the landing in Ravenna, Nebraska at the gas station. It was found empty five miles away north…"

"And about a mile away from the SUV were found the bodies of the agents," Reid finishes calmly, his calmness surprises him. "Butchered, tortured, signs of a struggle."

"Yes," Cleo says shakily. "Sheriffs of both Ravenna and Lincoln had asked for our assistance as well as the field office in Omaha. They are concerned about the panic…"

"That arose with the Ripper," Reid finishes.

"Could be a copy cat," Martinez suggests.

"DNA sample is exactly the same. They had ran it through ViCAP," Douglas says.

"It's the Ripper," Reid says firmly. "Wheels up in thirty and each of you swings by the armory for the backup weapon. The person who gets on the jet without at the very least two guns will be left at the airstrip, mark my words."

"Spencer…" Anderson's tone is calm and controlled and Reid hates it.

"Don't Spencer me, Robert," he uses his trademark sneer for the week and leaves the briefing room.

"I'm not going to lose another team, I'm not going to lose another team," he repeats his quiet mantra as he makes his way towards his office to fetch his go-bag.

"I'm not going to lose another team, I'm not going to lose another team," he jerks awake in his own bed.

It's 4:23 in the morning of 17th June 2011, Friday and it was just a dream.

There will be no case from Nebraska, no dead agents, no dead people, no dead teams. It's a fucking dream and this thing is finally going to be over.

4:24 he is still in his bed rubbing his eyes to clear them from sleep when his phone rings.

He looks at caller ID.

Hotch.

He picks it up and let's Hotch talk like he usually does.

"Reid we have a case. It's a bad one. We will all meet at Ronald Regan's in forty-five minutes," Hotch says.

"Where we are going?" Reid asks almost automatically.

"Lincoln and Ravenna, Nebraska," Hotch says heavily. "Red cells lost a team and there is still an abducted girl out there. See you at the airstrip.

Something akin to a chunk of lead settles in his stomach heavily.

_The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown._

_H. P. Lovecraft_

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><p><em><em>Like it? Hate it? Let me know.<em>_


	2. Chapter 2: Let Me Tell You About My Team

**DISCLAIMER**: The Mark Gordon Company, ABC Studios and CBS Paramount Network Television own Criminal Minds. I just took them out to play and I promise put them back when I'm done.

**Chapter summary:** _I don't think that it the prelude I had given Reid's dream the justice it deserves so this chapter is filled with snippets of SAC Reid and his team. Small journey between the start and the axis. For sure the quote is appropriate._

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><p><em>My team? Let me tell you about my team…<em>

_Aaron Hotchner_

**SAC SSA Spencer Reid - 12th December 2012 - Senior SSA Robert Anderson**

"You look like dead warmed up, Spence," says Anderson when he places the cup of coffee and a muffin in front of him, carefully avoiding placing it on the third draft of next year's budget.

"And a good day to you too, Rob," he snorts as he tries to predict whatever or not BAU is going to need MP5 because they need renovation, badly. "Can BAU survive without Bureau's coffee?"

"You tell me, you are the boss," Anderson shrugs.

"Well… it's not Kopi Luwac," he mutters.

"We ever had Kopi Luwac?" Anderson asks pointedly.

"Hotch bought it once as a Christmas bonus for the unit," he answers. "Dropped it on 22nd December, it was gone by 4th January. It was 2008/2009 if I remember correctly."

"Where were you?" Anderson asks cheekily.

"Vegas, San Francisco, Los Angeles, not in that order," he says. "I was the pig and drank the last cup of it."

"I know," Anderson smirks.

"My question is still on the table," Reid sighs.

"If we swear off Bureau's coffee would it be enough for you to fix MP5?" Anderson asks simply.

"Enough to replace Dead Dorris," Reid shrugs.

"I thought that the maintainers fixed her," Anderson says pointedly.

"They did," Reid deadpans. "Yesterday, she is not working today. I called them again but at this rate it's cheaper to buy new machine rather than fix the old one."

"I will start looking for the can," Anderson grimaces. "Your regime starts tragically."

"Thank you, Rob," he snorts.

"You're welcome, Spence, try to not wear yourself down," Anderson flashes him a smirk.

Rob Anderson is easy to please and a terrific support. Spencer Reid is glad to have him in the same team.

**SAC SSA Spencer Reid - 12th February 2013 onwards - SSA Doctor Kate Cameron**

They don't fight him when he snags her out of the academy. She is a psychiatrist and psychologist, doctor in both, MD and PhD respectively. She has BA in mathematics and geography. Her doctorates alone are enough to make her a BAUer, so what if they have to train her from the very beginning.

She is also twenty-one years old. She beat his record and he is happy with it. He doesn't like standing on the pedestal of the youngest to join FBI. She, she fits perfectly because she is an experienced doctor and looks like one, not like a runaway freshman from college.

She is his rookie and she learns fast, makes mistakes like everybody does but learns from them and doesn't do them again. She helps Winston who isn't Garcia to screen the cases and therefore she helps him because after JJ moved to the position of the section chief there is no one left in there to do the research properly. He is thankfully to her that she does it.

Having her around, even helping cranky Winston, means a lot. She is the mediator and God, Team Alpha needs a mediator.

Team Alpha at her early days consists from him, Rob, her, SSA Wentworth Smithers, SSA Jolly Eckelridge, SA Issac Romanov and TA Eric Winston. Within a year Smithers is replaced by Travers who is replaced by Watkins, who is replaced by Carter. Neither of Carter's predecessors can stand the pressure cooker that is BAU.

As for SSA Samuel Carter, he is the same son of a bitch who twelve years ago had no problems with leaving SA Spencer Reid at the mercy of the unsub. Gideon and Hotch send him packing all the way to Anchorage, Alaska but he married the daughter of the senator who has contacts that go a little above Reid's and JJ's heads so he is back to Quantico, Virginia and BAU and he acts as if he owns the unit.

He is proven wrong within a month Reid graciously gives him to adjust his attitude.

When the month passes Carter still has his attitude but in so far managed to piss off everyone on the team.

Reid excludes himself from the count because SAC SSA Spencer Reid and SA Doctor Spencer Reid despite the same name and DNA are not the same man. Rookie Reid avoided Carter like a plague. SAC Reid pairs up with Carter because he has thick skin and it stops his team from committing a murder on Carter.

Within a month Carter groped both Eckelridge and Cameron, in public. The former told him that if he would do so again she would break the hand that connected with her body and the later simply asked if he was an erotomaniac because his mommy was touching him in naughty places when he was a kid. Carter doesn't do it again but treats both like his secretaries, they prove him wrong once again, the case files that Carter drops on their desk to do his paperwork made their way back to his desk whenever he goes to take his coffee or takes a bathroom break.

Carter also pokes fun from Romanov's Judaism and Winston's slightly Australian accent (Winston is half and half). At first the jokes are tasteful and Romanov and Winston tolerate it, then they stop being tasteful and Romanov and Winston together with the girls purchase a gigantic butt-plug and place it on Carter's chair. The message is clear: You are an asshole.

Carter also taunts Rob about being second in command and not having enough balls to put Encyclopedia Britannica where it belongs. Rob is more mature than that and simply tells Carter that he likes Encyclopedia Britannica in charge.

By the time the team starts contemplating drowning the git in Potomac Reid already has back strong enough and friends in enough places to have seventh party deliver to Mrs Carter the documentation of the last weekend Carter spend with… it's Cameron who calmly delivers the last blow to the screeching daughter of the senator… with barely legal daughter of one of the victims of the local murder Carter was working on.

From there everything snowballs for Carter and within a month his wife divorces him on the spot and without the wife and her father Carter has no back and within two weeks he is back in Alaska.

The team rejoices but only for few days because one day Winston doesn't make it to the office and Romanov and Cameron find him dead in his own bed. The autopsy report is sobering. Heart-attack at thirty-nine, he died during the night.

In six months they make it through three TAs, including Kevin Lynch, who thought that he managed to move on enough to help BAU. The other two have such weak psyche that they put a request for transfer within two weeks. Kevin lasts five months until after one case he breaks down in the middle of the liar because one of the victims reminds him too much of Penelope.

This time it's Reid who fills the request for transfer for Kevin, to field office in Los Angeles, as far away from Quantico as one can get without ending in Alaska or Hawaii. Kevin stays within FBI for another year before he is offered a position at Google and he accepts it.

When the team is called to LA Reid eats an occasional dinner with Kevin and Marissa, who is not Garcia but who understands Kevin's loss and loves him anyway. Reid is also the best man at their wedding and godfather-in-absentia of their daughter Penelope and sons Derek and Dale.

It's Cameron who introduces him to Cleopatra Bernstein shortly after Kevin's transfer after the team had went through four woefully uncooperative TAs on loan.

Cleo ends in BAU after the initial training and turns out into blessing in disguise. By the time Cleo arrives Cameron is not a rookie any longer, she is SSA '_Screw the Doctor I Have Credentials and Glock 17_' Kate Cameron. Reid still introduces her as Doctor Cameron but more often than not he prefixes the Doctor with SSA.

Aside of him in the room full of uncooperative policemen she is the most dangerous mind in the room. He likes that, even silently admits to himself that he finds it somewhat sexy.

**SAC SSA Spencer Reid - 8th July 2020 - SSA Duncan Martinez and SSA Doctor Killian Douglas**

The jokester and the genius arrive in tandem. Hell, he even interviews them on the very same day. There is nothing wrong about it because he has to, he is down an agent and he needs two agents. Martinez got through the rounds, field office in Chicago then SWAT and is in FBI for three years when Reid interviews him.

The genius is fished out at Cal-Tech, oh great surprise, triple doctor in biology, mathematics and geology. It's Rob who fishes him out from the students and clears kid's path to the academy and BAU calls the shots before anyone else does.

Cameron avoids the kid like the plague and whenever the discussion concerning the kid come to the table she remains fucking Swiss.

It isn't until after the kid was almost kidnapped and ends with a severe concussion when at Douglas's age of twenty-three and Cameron's thirty-one in a hospital in Atlanta, Georgia it's revealed after two years that Douglas's mother maiden name is Cameron, more precisely Emerson Cameron, dead as of twelve years, older sister of one Kate Jane Cameron.

The incident creates a rift hard to overcome but in the end what matters is that Douglas doesn't directly answer to Cameron and Cameron remains coldly objective when Douglas's issues come to the table if she doesn't withhold her judgment.

Technically he should fire them or at the very least reassign them to two different teams but he finds himself unable to. So he settles for death glower and a long, terse dinner with the two of them.

He keeps his distance from both for another year until it occurs to him that he and Rob dispatched Cameron all on her own to the house of the unsub.

Cameron comes out from the incident relatively unscratched, with only low level concussion and Reid freaks out over her in his own manner while the team babies her and nurses her back to health.

Trust is not a given thing, it has to be earned and for Cameron it's Travis Deacon, Reid's personal Chester Hardwick. It's Cameron who occupies Deacon long enough for the guards to come back and it's Cameron who drives him home without saying a word until she drops him at his apartment.

"I will always trust you," that's all she says that day. "And I ask you to trust in my abilities if not myself."

Next day they are in Boston and they are victims of hit-and-run car accident on their way to interview the family of one of the victims. He was driving. Because of Cameron and her medical training he still has his left leg and he is worried sick when she loses consciousness when paramedics reach them. She lost a lot of blood because she cared for his injuries rather than hers.

Douglas ends running between two rooms until the doctors say that Cameron is out of the woods.

Sometimes he witnesses the events and sometimes he just has the knowledge of them happening and as the time flies he gets attached to his dream team like he is attached to his team.

Time flies but it doesn't lessen the pain.

**SAC SSA Spencer Reid - 12th January 2028 – SA Jack Hotchner**

Over the years, against his best judgment and common sense he meets with Jack Hotchner who after Hotch's death had ended under the care of Jessica and Mike Berkeley, his aunt and uncle.

Jessica nurtures in Jack the memory of Haley and Reid nurtures in Jack the memory of Hotch.

He attends Jack's soccer matches and is the loudest cheer around the stadium. No matter how exhausted he feels he always finds the time for Jack, he always accepts Jack's calls. It's him whom Jack asks to attend Careers Day at his primary school. It's also him who helps Jack with high school problems and helps Jessica with making adjustments for Jack to skip three years at school.

Jack is smart, by the time he enters the academy he is working on his dissertation from abnormal psychology. Hell, despite being Jack's godfather-in-absentia and the closest confidant Jack has in adults aside of Jessica because Jack never felt close to Mike, it isn't until Rob tells him that he has one Jack Hotchner in his profiling classes that he learns that Jack is in FBI academy.

It's the dinner on Friday after Rob drops this particular bomb when one Jack Hotchner delivers Spencer Reid his riot act. Yes, thank you, he knows into what he signed himself and doesn't it make you a hypocrite that you always told Aunt Jess to support my choices no matter what they were as long as they weren't against the law?

It's Cameron who mediates between one pissed off Spencer Reid and one huffy Jack Hotchner. In the end Reid accepts Jack's choice to follow his father's footsteps and he launches a campaign of his own.

Jack belongs to BAU but not because of Hotch but because over Hotch's casket Reid made a promise to Hotch that no matter what will happen in the future he will protect Hotch's son to his dying breath. Thankfully Jack is almost a doctor of abnormal psychology and even if fighting for him is hard Jack wants to end in BAU. Reid is grateful for that because as long as Jack is in BAU Reid can keep an eye on him and can protect him the best to his abilities which means that he can keep his promise to Hotch, no matter how painful is watching Jack seated at his own desk from the office that once belonged to his father.

So when JJ summons him to question his decision over hiring Jack Hotchner and his ability to lead his team Reid straightens his back and says.

"My team? Let me tell you about my team…"

_There's only one thing to say about pain, it hurts._

_Zeke Willey_

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><p><em>Like it? Hate it? Let me know.<em>

_Next time: Old team discusses the case, the jet flies to Nebraska, Reid catches a nap and SAC SSA Reid tells his team about the Ripper on the flight to Nebraska. Reid's instinct kicks in for the first time. _

_Good instincts usually tell you what to do long before your head has figured it out. ~__Michael Burke_


End file.
